Look down-on what? A fathomless abyss. A dread eternity! how surely mine! And can eternity belong to me,
Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
How passing wonder He who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes !
From different natures marvellously mix'd, Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain! Midway from nothing to the Deity! A beam ethereal, sullied and absorb'd! Though sullied and dishonour'd, still divine! Dim miniature of greatness absolute ! An heir of glory! a frail child of dust! Helpless immortal! insect infinite! A worm! A god!—I tremble at myself, And in myself am lost. At home a stranger, Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, And wondering at her own. How Reason reels! O what a miracle to man is man! Triumphantly distress'd! what joy! what dread! Alternately transported and alarm'd; What can preserve my life! or what destroy An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there.
'Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof: While o'er my limbs Sleep's soft dominion spreads, What though my soul fantastic measures trod O'er fairy fields, or mourn'd along the gloom Of pathless woods, or down the craggy steep Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool, Or scaled the cliff, or danced on hollow winds With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain!
Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature Of subtler essence than the trodden clod; Active, aerial, towering, unconfined,
Unfetter'd with her gross companion's fall. E'en silent Night proclaims my soul immortal: E'en silent Night proclaims eternal day! For human weal Heaven husbands all events: Dull Sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain. Why then their loss deplore, that are not lost? Why wanders wretched Thought their tombs around In infidel distress? Are angels there?
They live! they greatly live! a life on earth
Slumbers, raked up in dust, ethereal fire?
Unkindled, unconceived, and from an eye
Of tenderness let heavenly pity fall
On me, more justly number'd with the dead.
This is the desert, this the solitude : How populous, how vital is the grave! This is Creation's melancholy vault, The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom; The land of apparitions, empty shades! All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
Is substance; the reverse is Folly's creed.
How solid all, where change shall be no more!
This is the bud of being, the dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the vestibule :
Life's theatre, as yet is shut; and Death,
Strong Death, alone can heave the massy bar, This gross impediment of clay remove, And make us, embryos of existence, free. From real life but little more remote Is he, not yet a candidate for light, The future embryo, slumbering in his sire. Embryos we must be till we burst the shell, Yon ambient azure shell, and spring to life, The life of gods, O transport! and of man.
Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts,
Inters celestial hopes without one sigh:
Prisoner of earth and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes; wing'd by Heaven
To fly at infinite, and reach it there,
Where seraph's gather immortality.
On Life's fair tree fast by the throne of God,
What golden joys ambrosial clustering glow
In His full beam, and ripen for the just,
Where momentary ages are no more!
Where Time, and Pain, and Chance, and Death expire! And is it in the flight of threescore years To push eternity from human thought, And smother souls immortal in the dust? A soul immortal, spending all her fires, Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness, Thrown into tumult, raptured, or alarm'd At aught this scene can threaten or indulge, Resembles ocean into tempest wrought, To waft a feather or to drown a fly.
Where falls this censure? it o'erwhelms myself; How was my heart instructed by the world!
O how self-fetter'd was my grovelling soul!
How like a worm, was I wrapp'd round and round In silken thought, which reptile Fancy spun, Till darken'd Reason lay quite clouded o'er With soft conceit of endless comfort here, Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies! Night visions may befriend (as sung above :) Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dream'd, Of things impossible! (could sleep do more ?) Of joys perpetual in perpetual change! Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave; Eternal sunshine in the storms of life! How richly were my noontide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys, Joy behind joy, in endless pérspective :
Till at Death's toll, whose restless iron tongue Calls daily for his millions at a meal, Starting I woke, and found myself undone.
Where now my frenzy's pompous furniture? The cobweb'd cottage, with its ragged wall Of mouldering mud, is royalty to me;
The spider's most attenuated thread Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie On earthly bliss: it breaks at every breeze.
O ye bless'd scenes of permanent delight!. Full above measure! lasting beyond bound! A perpetuity of bliss is bliss.
Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end,
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy, And quite unparadise the realms of light.
Strikes empires from the root; each moment plays His little weapon in the narrower sphere
Of sweet domestic comfort, and cuts down
The fairest bloom of sublunary bliss.
Bliss! sublunary bliss!-proud words, and vain!
implicit treason to divine decree !
A bold invasion of the rights of Heaven!
I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air.
O had I weigh'd it ere my fond embrace,
What darts of agony had miss'd my heart!
Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the stars. The Sun himself by thy permission shines,
And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere : Amid such mighty plunder, why exhaust
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean?
Why thy peculiar rancour wreak'd on me?
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain ; And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn. O Cynthia! why so pale? dost thou lament
Thy wretched neighbour? grieve to see thy wheel Of ceaseless change outwhirl'd in human life? How wanes my borrow'd bliss! from Fortune's smile, Precarious courtesy ! not Virtue's sure, Self-given, solar, ray of sound delight.
In every varied posture, place, and hour, How widow'd every thought of every joy ! Thought, busy thought! too busy for my peace Through the dark postern of time long elapsed, Lec softly, by the stillness of the night, Led, like a murderer, (and such it proves!) Strays (wretched rover !) o'er the pleasing past, In quest of wretchedness perversely strays, And finds all desert now, and meets the ghosts Of my departed joys, a numerous train!
I rue the riches of my former fate; Sweet comfort's blasted clusters I lament;
I tremble at the blessings once so dear,
And every pleasure pains me to the heart.
Yet why complain? or why complain for one? 235 Hangs out the Sun his lustre but for me, The single man? are angels all beside ? I mourn for millions; 'tis the common lot: In this shape or in that has Fate entail'd The mother's throes on all of woman born; Not more the children than sure heirs of pain. War, famine, pest, volcano, storm, and fire, Intestine broils, Oppression, with her heart Wrapp'd up in triple brass, besiege mankind. God's image, disinherited of day,
Here plunged in mines, forgets a Sun was made: There beings, deathless as their haughty lord,
Are hammer'd to the galling oar for life,
And plough the winter's wave, and reap despair.
Some for hard masters, broken under arms,
In battle lopp'd away, with half their limbs, Beg bitter bread through realms their valour saved, If so the tyrant or his minion doom.
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